Texas Textbook Battle Over Evolution Likely To Continue Until The Final Day

The battle over how evolution will be presented for all public school students in Texas led to rallies and heated testimony during a State Board of Education meeting.

Much of the controversy has to do with a group of people who are proponents of "creationism" that are trying to alter the way evolution is presented in next year’s biology textbook, questioning the soundness of the theory.

Dan Quinn is with the Texas Freedom Network, the group that rallied against the alteration of the materials.

"What we see is publishers, for the most part, are resisting that kind of pressure," Quinn said. "They refuse to include in their textbooks -- and the changes the proposed to those textbooks -- any material that is not based on sound, well-established science when it comes to evolution."

Quinn said the board will not vote on these textbooks until late November and changes have come at the last minute before.

Another factor in this issue is that the Texas Education Agency will not force schools to use one book, they will instead have a choice between a selection of books from approved publishers.

After the SBOE gives its final say on the matter in late November, the Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams will have the final say before schools can begin using the textbooks.